Abstract :
For powering devices from ambient energy sources, innovative CMOS circuit techniques are devised to facilitate highly efficient energy harvesting. Depending on the applications, the loads can range widely from nW to mW and the required output voltages vary from sub-1V to tens of volts. The energy sources can be electrochemical gradient inside an ear, thermoelectric generators, piezoelectric transducers, fuel cells, solar cells, and others. This session starts with three papers presenting novel ultra low power circuits for charge pumping, DC-to-DC conversion and power management, followed by five papers on enabling techniques for dual source power management, energy pile-up resonance, maximum power point tracking and high-voltage charge pumps.